For your holiday table, natural elements can take center stage

For inspiration in holiday decorating, take a look at natural outdoor settings: soft evergreen branches, a flash of red or gold berries, fresh herbs and warm light.

John Michler of Michler's Florist, Greenhouses and Garden Design gathered moss, Calamondin oranges, tricolor sage, air plants and roses for a Thanksgiving centerpiece and arranged them on a plank of well-worn wood, making it easy to move. To give the arrangement some height but still allow dinner guests to talk across the table, he added asparagus fronds and pheasant feathers.

John Michler of Michler's Florist, Greenhouses and Garden Design gathered moss, Calamondin oranges, tri-color sage, airplants, and roses for his Thanksgiving table design. The open, airy see-through height is accomplished by adding delicate asparagus fronds and pheasant feathers. The base, which is a plank of well-worn wood, can be moved easily; here it's on display in an old unused greenouse. Photo credit Susan Smith-Durisek

With woodland decor and fruit of the season as basic elements, embellishments can be added to personalize your holiday table. Here a ring of evergreen boughs and white pine cones , along with a glass vase holding cranberries around a candle allow space for bird ornaments from my collection of Hallmark releases. This is the 2013 Cedar Waxwing. Photo credit Susan Smith-Durisek

Fayette County Cooperative Extension Service agent Jamie Dockery collected crabapples, boxwood, pine needles, magnolia leaves and more, and put them in square glass candle holders. The modern arrangement is low to allow conversation across the holiday table and easy to reuse throughout the house.
Fayette County Cooperative Extension Service

For holiday color and sparkle, Michler's Florist put air plants in hanging glass spheres in the store. They could take the place of a traditional on-the-table centerpiece.

John Michler of Michler's Florist, Greenhouses and Garden Design gathered moss, Calamondin oranges, tri-color sage, airplants, and roses for his Thanksgiving table design. The open, airy see-through height is accomplished by adding delicate asparagus fronds and pheasant feathers. The base, which is a plank of well-worn wood, can be moved easily; here it's on display in an old unused greenouse. Photo credit Susan Smith-Durisek

A clear glass vase serves as a pillar for a cascade of evergreen, golden thread cypress and Christmas cactus. At the base, add more natural elements and a candle.

Accents like this bird ornament provide a personal touch when using natural elements such as pine cones, evergreens and cranberries as holiday décor.

For inspiration in holiday decorating, take a look at natural outdoor settings: soft evergreen branches, a flash of red or gold berries, fresh herbs and warm light.

See what you can find to use from your own landscape, and scout what's available at your favorite garden shop or nursery. The scent and sight of pine boughs in wreaths and swags are bound to bring about good cheer.

When gathering family and friends around the dinner table, create a centerpiece that allows conversations to flow easily. Keep it low enough to talk over, transparent and uncluttered enough to see through, or high enough to form an out-of-the-way canopy.

Fayette County Cooperative Extension Service agent Jamie Dockery, whose Gardener's Toolbox series of lectures covers a broad spectrum of garden lifestyle topics each year, has some great ideas.

A simple, modern and graphic display can be assembled by lining up a couple of rows of 2-inch-square glass votive candle holders, placed adjacent to one another along the length of a table's center.

"Make a checkerboard pattern of alternating colors and textures by filling each one with a contrasting bunch of colored leaves, berries, pine cones or small candles," he says.

Dockery suggests using grasslike, bluish-green pine needles; small, dark green and glossy magnolia leaves; yellow-fruited crabapple berries; and small pine cones. Later, the display can be moved to highlight other locations, for instance along a mantel or atop a piano.

Dockery says greenery can be found everywhere, from a final gleaning of waxy blue-green cabbage, Brussels sprout leaves and funky dried okra pods in the vegetable patch to scavenging moss-covered branches that have fallen in a wooded area after a storm.

If you're a forward thinker, consider planting shrubs such as red-berried nandina, winterberry holly and golden Thread Branch cypress, which can be used to add color and special effects to your yard and then your table.

John Michler, whose family-owned Michler's Florist, Greenhouses and Garden Design has put together holiday floral pieces for generations, designed an arrangement that is at once practical, artistic, earthy and innovative.

He took a well-weathered wood board and lined the top with moss before building up layers that include air plants, tricolor sage, Calamondin oranges, rosemary, bay and pale peach-petaled roses. To add height without blocking the cross-table view, a few airy fronds of asparagus and some narrow pheasant feathers crown the display.

"The board allows this arrangement to be moved and set anywhere," Michler says.

The addition of colorful air plants — which looked great in a grouping of clear glass spheres hanging at the shop and would be a modern take on a centerpiece hanging above a dinner table — brings something new and different into the arrangement. The herbs and oranges add a freshly harvested scent perfect for Thanksgiving.

Another idea that would allow easy communication at the table is to elevate flowers and greenery by putting them atop a tall, narrow clear glass vase.

A platter fastened on the top of the vase can be draped with overhanging white pine, holly and other evergreen branches interspersed with red- flowered Christmas cactus.

At table level, a few greens and pine cones form a bed that circles the bottom of the vase, which can contain a low candle or a few inches of berries or sparkling ribbon. Special touches, like a whimsical elf toy to catch a child's eye or heirloom ornaments to highlight the season with a personal touch, are easy to add.

To get some hands-on guidance in working with holiday greenery, sign up for a local workshop where you can learn how to make a wreath, work with succulents or do bonsai.

IF YOU GO

Holiday workshops

Here are holiday workshops and classes at some area garden centers. If you don't see your favorite center here, call to see whether it offers classes.